Frozen Yogurt
by Sapphire2007
Summary: House knows Cuddy's language of frozen yogurt and instantly knows that something's wrong with her when she breaks her food pattern.


"_Once a month, when you leave the kid's cancer ward, your eyes glisten. About three days later, you break your ban on sugar and chow down a bucket of frozen yogurt in the cafeteria, sprinkles included. Based on the last yogurt sighting, you've got another week before you ovulate." House in "Forever"_

**

* * *

****Frozen yogurt**

Usually there was a pattern in everything she did.  
Of course, it was a pattern only to him who had been studying her for almost eleven years now. It gave him the illusion that he knew her, that he understood how she worked on the inside.  
But in fact, he knew nothing.

He only knew that frozen yogurt was always a bad sign. Especially this week.  
Because she had never eaten this much frozen yogurt before, and she had never taken such a long break from it before either.  
And that broke the pattern he had got used to in all these years.

Frozen yogurt was the strongest proof that she had her weaknesses, too. That she was a woman who – like any other woman and basically any other human being – had good days and bad days.  
Days when they wanted to shut the world out, days when all they needed was an embrace, a shoulder to lean on, the lack of which making them feel naked, cold and lost in a world where women no longer could afford the privilege of being the fairer sex.  
Days when they needed to indulge in the sweetness of a forbidden sin to feel alive.  
Days when their longing for something was so overwhelming that sublimation was the only thing that kept them from going crazy and running amok.

Yes, all this lay in the hands of the frozen yogurt industry.  
And House wondered whether they knew about their responsibility for the mental health of millions of women.

Frozen yogurt had completely vanished from her menu over the past weeks.  
And now it was back.  
In alarmingly high amounts and variable flavors. All of them carrying a message of their own.

After a fight with him she usually went for the light, fruity sugar-free lime flavored one.  
That had changed though. In the beginning she had needed the full load of heavy dark chocolate flavor and over the years she had got used to the constant annoyance employing him meant. He had liked noticing that change, he liked to be associated with the fresh biting flavor of lime. Though he had to admit that it had made him proud to have been the reason why she had fallen for the taste of rich luscious chocolate over and over again. There was nothing better than watching a woman fall for temptations and regretting her weakness afterwards.  
Guilt was a giant turn on when combined with desire.

After a bad date he had spotted her choosing the colorful flavors, switching back and forth between strawberry and green apple. He was still trying to figure out whether strawberry was related to a bad date involving bad sex, too, or just to a bad date in general.

Because she always went for the berry flavors after bad sex.

For the revealing mornings after nights with good sex she always reserved the rich and creamy flavors, Caramel and Vanilla.  
Vanilla was the only flavor she chose for the plain satisfaction of feeling the aromatic explosion of flavor melting on her tongue.  
She chose it for the pure sin itself before she would return to her life of self-control and duties.  
He had only seen her eat that a handful of times including the time she had shared one whole bucket of Vanilla frogurt with him…

Passion fruit was an indicator of pure desperation and hystery. She always ate that when her mother was in town.

Guilt usually made her crave for Black Truffle. He had seen a lot of that in those eleven years.

And then there were the worst days.

The ones where she chose the plain white, sugar- and fatfree version. The one that tasted like a mixture of soy, rice and old paper.  
Those were the days when she felt colorless and empty, when even the blue in her eyes seemed to fade into the abyss of expressionless whiteness.  
And that was exactly the frozen yogurt she was spooning now.  
For the third time in a row.

House watched her from the distance while he was waiting for his hot dog.  
She always sat down at the same table in the cafeteria, the one closest to the exit, as if she was feeling guilty for taking a break at all.  
Apparently she was completely absorbed with the lecture of an article in the medical journal lying on the table in front of her while she was playing around with the spoon in the half-empty bowl of simple white frozen yogurt. Every once in a while she lifted the spoon and stuffed some of it into her mouth, abstractedly sucking on the spoon as if she was hoping for some flavor to be released out of the cold metal.  
He grabbed a fistful of ketchup and mustard packages, took a coke out of the fridge and walked over to her table sitting down on the chair across from her.  
Wordlessly and simply as if there was nothing in the world that could be more natural.

She looked up and frowned, but most of all she was on the alert to defend her little peaceful ten-minute escape from her work.  
But when he didn't return the look but started squeezing the ketchup over his hot dog she remained silent and pretended he wasn't even there.  
So she looked down again and continued reading her article.

He was obviously trying to annoy her because there was no way anybody decent would ever eat a hot dog that noisily in a public space sitting at a table with a woman.  
Ignoring it worked for about a minute.  
He finally had her when he made a straw sucking noise that could have taken on the suction sounds in the OR.  
She gave him a condescending look.

"If there's anything you're trying to communicate here, please do it now. Cause I'm not going to tolerate those primate sounds any longer."

"That's too bad, cause I was going to give you some examples of my famous tongue twister belches.You would have been impressed."

"Well if that's how you tried to pick up the girls in college it's no wonder you were single most of the time."

"Yah. _Most_ of the time", he replied and gave her a sincere look that made her avert her gaze sourly. "What ?" he asked innocently."_You_ brought that up."

Still looking at her he lifted the hot dog to his mouth again and took another big bite with the ketchup covered onions dropping onto the plastic plate.  
His eyes went back and forth between the expression on her face while she was trying to ignore him and her fingers playing with the spoon in her frogurt bowl.  
She had stopped eating it and it was slowly melting into a milky slurry mush while the fingers of her other hand slid under the pages of her journal and turned them, one after another one.  
It was obvious that she wasn't going to finish her yogurt, neither was she going to finish reading the articles.

Then why was she still sitting there, trying to ignore him, so obviously failing at the same time ?

He frowned when he noticed the tiny puffs under her eyes and let his eyes scan her from head to toe until he saw the pieces of the puzzle finally assembling in front of his inner eye.  
It all made perfect sense.  
His eyes came to a rest on her hands, wandered over her knuckles and focussed on the thin lines of her long fingers. He was sure that he already knew these lines by heart, just like he knew the exact number of freckles she got in the summer and that she never got puffs under her eyes unless she cried herself to sleep at least three days in a row.

She was now stirring the spoon around in the frozen yogurt mush.

"Frozen yogurt", he finally mumbled thoughtfully and she nodded silently before she suddenly looked up, alarmed by the soft tone of his voice.

She felt caught. Because she knew that he knew her secret.  
He was the only one who understood the language of the frozen yogurts, actually he was the one who had made her become aware of that herself. She had never paid attention to it until he had told her that this had been the key to figuring out her menstrual cycle.  
Which, by itself, had been an insanely disturbing move, even for House.

She looked at the last melting scoop of frozen yogurt she had so absent-mindedly played around with and put the spoon down guiltily, feeling completely unguarded.

Their eyes met and she returned his look frankly, allowing him to reveal that most intimate secret she had kept to herself over the past eight weeks.

For a second the silence between them allowed the heaviness of all the unspoken feelings each one of them was carrying around with them to unfold. The space in between them filled with possibilities of what might have been. And that comfortable distance between them, that they both needed to breathe seemed to fade.

But before any of this could really crawl inside one of them and find a place in their souls to sit down, rest and grow, he shrugged and looked away.

"Curious. Could have sworn you were pregnant."

She lowered her gaze and swallowed, feeling the last layer of sweetness from the frozen yogurt on her tongue running down her throat.  
She bit her lip and let her eyes wander over the words and numbers in the medical article lying in front of her. They all seemed so meaningless when they slowly disappeared behind that thin film of tears emerging in her eyes. So she looked away from them, too and watched the people passing by, entering and leaving the cafeteria, laughing, chatting, chewing.  
Everything was fine. Normal. Okay. And so was she.  
The colors returned and the pictures in front of her eyes sharpened again as she swallowed her tears and looked at House again.

"I was", she finally admitted hoarsely and saw the surprise in his eyes when he looked up at her.

There weren't many things that caught his attention.  
Which was why it hurt to see that this did. Because that meant that this was not as meaningless as she had tried to make it seem to cope with her loss.  
It meant that this really was something that could turn your world upside down.

Before he could even respond to that she got up and left the table heading for the ladies' room, at least that's what he supposed.  
To wipe away the only objective traces of her pain: the thin mascara shadow under her lower eyelid.  
Thereby wiping away the pain itself.  
Because that's what they always did.  
He had his pills. She had her own escapes, too.

The words were lying heavy on his tongue, now ripped off their meaning since she didn't even want to hear them.  
Maybe because she hadn't expected him to say anything at all.  
He tasted the bitterness of the silence she had left him with, it ran down his throat, burdening his heart with every other beat.  
Once again the words would remain unspoken adding to the distance between them.  
Yet, that invisible connection would always be there.

Because they had their own language that allowed them to remain a secret to the world while revealing their vulnerability to one another, to the only person who could save them.  
To whom they could show their frangibility without risking to be broken.

He swallowed a pill with a big gulp of coke and leant back in his chair, staring at the empty space in front of him.

The frozen yogurt was running down the spoon she had played with only a few minutes ago. Viscid white drops were slowly dripping on the table.

She was going to be fine. Because she had returned to eating frozen yogurt.

And he knew that there would be a day when she would even eat Vanilla frogurt again.


End file.
